Godrej Industries Limited – 1Q12

My core holding, Godrej Industries Ltd. (GIL) continues to inch up amidst all this talk about desi rate hikes, debt ceiling, Greco-Roman excesses and Obama’s insomnia. Over the last one year, the stock is up 15.7% compared to the NIFTY. The company announced its 1Q12 results on 30Jul11 covering the following points:

The agri business has grown 40% yoy while the other core business of Chemicals is up 28% yoy. Both in revenue terms.

So to me, the results look very good indeed. In my previous post on GIL (dated 31Oct’10), I’d written about the integration challenges that GIL will face as it goes about acquiring companies. Well, the recent Godrej – Hershey breakup just adds to the fears. I guess global majors may be seeing low barriers to entry in the yummy Indian food sector and therefore itch to go solo. I’m thinking – how expensive would it really be to set up a sales & distribution & marketing infrastructure when denominated in GBP or USD? I don’t know but it may not be a large sum for a global foods major who has decided about getting serious in India. I know I may be trying to justify but typically I do not fall in love with the stocks I own!!

Another update I wanted to share was about the general notion that holding companies are duds because they trade at a massive discount to the market value of the assets that they own. Last month there was a lot of buzz about these holding companies – thankfully the general downward bias of the markets stopped spikes of manic proportions. As of now, I don’t give a rats ass about holding companies other than GIL obviously. Speaking of which I did start wondering about who moved my cheese when I came across this video clip of an interview of Basant Maheshwari on CNBC-TV18!! This is what he had to say about the Godrej gang of shares.

Godrej Industries did very well for 4 – 5 years because investors who wanted to buy Godrej Properties, couldn’t buy Godrej Properties. The only option was to buy Godrej Industries, but now if Godrej Properties is listed and I am bullish on Godrej Properties, I’ll go and buy Godrej Properties. Why will I buy Godrej Industries?

And these are the nuggets of wisdom I picked up from this interview:

Embedded values in holding companies always remain valuable!!

Investors make money in a cheap stock only when the cheap stock becomes expensive. So it has to bloody well move. There is no point in holding up your capital on a sloth.

If you are playing for the valuation gap i.e. the discount factor of the holding company to aggregate market value of its assets, then that’s wrong since the discount will always continue to exist.

Key play should be in holding companies which A) consolidate the earnings of their subsidiaries; B) the subsidiaries pay dividend and C) the holding company has a majority holding. C being the cause of point A really.

Buy those kind of holding companies whose subsidiaries are not listed such that the act of taking them public monetises the discount factor and unlocks value.

A holding company that receives discount from its subsidiaries usually does not go into too steep a discount. That is because if the dividend yield of the subsidiary is X% and the holding company is at a Y% discount then the dividend/income yield on the holding company’s portion of investion would be X%/(1 – Y%). The market will flatten this discrepancy by reducing the discount.

The reason why discount is justified is because if a holding company decides to monetize its assets and sell of all its holdings, it will still have to pay taxes on the income recieved. Therefore, the logic for discounting holding company’s asset values is correct.

Finally, if you are bullish on the holding company you have to be bullish on the underlying assets. If those assets are listed, it always makes sense to buy the underlying assets directly.

Now this has me thinking. Need to investigate and read up more to figure out what to do.

Finally, This is how some people are valuing the company: 9 times multiple for core businesses of GIL + 40% haircut to the market value of GIL’s stake in Godrej Properties and Godrej Consumer Products Limited. Adding all of this up gives a Sum Of The Parts valuation of ~240 – 250. Given CMP of 225 – 230, the company looks fairly priced. From the short term technicals perspective, 240 looks like a good resting place for the stock. From the longer term perspective, which is mine, the play is to ride the business growth and hope for a measured EPS expansion in the quarters to come.